New scholarship on American lit

Two faculty members who specialize in American literature have each published new co-edited collections recently. Here’s a brief look:

Associate Professor of English Brigitte Bailey published Margaret Fuller and Her Circles, a collection of essays edited by Professor Bailey, Katheryn P. Viens, and Conrad Edick Wright (U of NH Press/UPNE, 2013).

Fuller was an important American public intellectual of the nineteenth century. A journalist and critic, she advocated for women’s rights, the emancipation of slaves, prison reform, and other social changes.

“These essays mark the maturation of scholarship on Margaret Fuller… Drawing on developments in gender theory, transatlantic studies, and archival excavations of the networks of reform, this volume defines Fuller as a significant intellectual precursor, a critic who analyzed and challenged the dominant interpretive paradigms of her own time and who remains strikingly relevant for ours.”–UPNE

Professor of English Monica Chiu’s collection, Diversity in the Diaspora: Hmong Americans in the Twenty-First Century, just published by the University of Hawaii Press, is an anthology that explores Hmong Americans’ inclusion in and contribution to American history and culture, and the field of Asian American studies. The volume is edited by Professor Chiu, Mark Edward Pfeifer, and Kou Yang.

“Diversity in Diaspora showcases the desire to shape new contours of Hmong American studies as Hmong American scholars themselves address new issues. It represents an essential step in carving out space for Hmong Americans as primary actors in their own right and in placing Hmong American studies within the purview of Asian American studies.”–University of Hawaii Press